Learning Chapter 6

Which is learned? Sneezing when dust gets in your nose Blinking your eye when a puff of air hits it Drooling when you taste a lemon Increasing heart rate when you see a spider

What is Learning? Relatively permanent change in behavior or mental state based on experience – Relatively permanent change: Can be altered with future learning – Behavior: Some response to a situation or event – Mental state: knowledge, attitude, belief, strategy

What is NOT “learning?” Instincts: behaviors that occur as a result of the organism’s genotype Reflexes: behaviors that occur as a result of an automatic reaction to some environmental change or condition

Conditioning is another word for “learning”

What is Classical Conditioning? A simple form of learning in which one stimulus calls forth the response that is usually called for by another stimulus. This occurs when two stimuli have been associated with each other.

What is a stimulus? Something that produces a reaction (response)

Ivan Pavlov Russian psychologist who discovered that dogs, too, learn to associate one thing with another when food is involved.

Pavlov’s Experiment What was he studying? Salivation, or mouth watering in dogs What he discovered: Dogs mouths wouldn’t wait until they had received meat to start salivating. – For example: the dogs mouths started salivating when his assistants entered the laboratory or they heard the clinking of the food trays.  Why? Because the dogs had learned from experience that these events—the clinking of trays, the arrival of assistants—meant that food was coming.

Pavlov developed a new research question after observing this behavior of the dogs.  If the dogs could learn to salivate in response to the clinking of food trays because this clinking was associated with the bringing of meat, could they learn to salivate in response to any stimulus that signaled meat? Pavlov predicted they could.

New stimulus: ringing of a bell New Procedure: – He would ring a bell once dogs were strapped into harnesses – Half a second after the bell rang, meat powder was place on dogs’ tongues. – Pavlov repeated this process numerous times. – After several pairings of the meat and the bell, Pavlov changed the procedure but sounding the bell but presenting no meat. – The dogs salivated anyway. This is classical conditioning!

Learning

Unconditioned stimulus – A stimulus that causes a response that is automatic, not learned (the food/meat) Unconditioned response – The automatic response (dogs’ salivation) Conditioned stimulus – previously neutral stimulus that, after becoming associated with the unconditioned stimulus, eventually comes to trigger a conditioned response. (the Bell/tone) Conditioned response – A learned response to a stimulus that was previously neutral (dogs’ salivation, to the bell)

What is a taste aversion? A learned avoidance of a particular food.

What is extinction? Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus is disconnected from the unconditioned stimulus. As a result, the conditioned stimulus no longer causes the conditioned response to occur.

No pairing with Food Eventually, dog will no longer respond Extinction!

What is spontaneous recovery? Organisms sometimes display responses that were extinguished earlier.

What is flooding? A person is exposed to the harmless stimulus until fear responses to that stimulus are extinguished. – Ex: – A person with a fear of heights might look out a window on the sixth floor until she or he is longer upset. – A person with a fear of snakes would be put in a room with lots of harmless snakes.

What is systematic desensitization? Used to help people overcome fears First, people are taught relaxation techniques. Then, they are exposed gradually to whatever stimulus they fear while remain relaxed. – For ex: people who are afraid of snakes will be first shown pictures of snakes, while they are relaxed. Once they can view the pictures of snakes without losing that sense of relaxation, they will move forward to seeing actual snakes from a distance. They will practice their relaxation techniques at that stage and then, once they can remain calm, they will move forward to maybe touching a snake.

What is counter-conditioning? A pleasant stimulus is paired repeatedly with a fearful one, to counteract that fear.

What is the Bell-Pad method? Pg. 135

Operant Conditioning What helps change behavior more, reinforcement or punishment? Explain

What is operant conditioning? People and animals learn to do things, and not to do other things, because of the results of what they do In other words, people learn from the consequences of their actions.

B. F. Skinner American Psychologist Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Boxoperant conditioning chamber Skinner believed that the best way to understand behavior is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. He called this approach operant conditioning.

Skinner Box—Pigeon experiment Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. The box contained a lever in the side and as the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The consequence of receiving food if they pressed the lever ensured that they would repeat the action again and again.

Reinforcement The process by which a stimulus (in Skinner’s case, the food) increases the chances that the preceding behavior, (the pigeon’s pressing the lever) will occur again. Reinforcement increases behavior.

Types of Reinforcers Primary Reinforcers – People do not need to be taught the value of primary reinforcers. – Ex: food, water, adequate warmth Secondary Reinforcers – Value must be learned – Ex: money, attention, social approval.

Punishments – decrease the frequency of behavior

When reinforcing behavior Positive – Add something to change a behavior Negative – Take something away to change behavior

Learning by Observation Higher animals, especially humans, learn through observing and imitating others. The monkey on the right imitates the monkey on the left in touching the pictures in a certain order to obtain a reward. © Herb Terrace

Imitation Onset Learning by observation begins early in life. This 14-month-old child imitates the adult on TV in pulling a toy apart. Meltzoff, A.N. (1998). Imitation of televised models by infants. Child Development, Photos Courtesy of A.N. Meltzoff and M. Hanuk.

Bandura's Experiments Bandura's Bobo doll study (1961) indicated that individuals (children) learn through imitating others who receive rewards and punishments. Courtesy of Albert Bandura, Stanford University

Applications of Observational Learning Unfortunately, Bandura’s studies show that antisocial models (family, neighborhood or TV) may have antisocial effects.

Positive Observational Learning Fortunately, prosocial (positive, helpful) models may have prosocial effects. Bob Daemmrich/ The Image Works

Television and Observational Learning Gentile et al., (2004) shows that children in elementary school who are exposed to violent television, videos, and video games express increased aggression. Ron Chapple/ Taxi/ Getty Images

Modeling Violence Research shows that viewing media violence leads to an increased expression of aggression. Children modeling after pro wrestlers Bob Daemmrich/ The Image Works Glassman/ The Image Works